Date of publication: 09.11.2016
From Moscow to Vladivostok by train.
To get to know our vast Motherland better, KP special correspondents chose an extreme form of domestic tourism [KP poll: will they make it there or not?]
Nobody forced them, they wanted it themselves! On November 3, Vladimir Vorsobin and Viktor Huseynov went on a trip around the country. They will spend a whole month on trains. Most likely, the guys will come to Vladivostok as completely different people: thoughtful, thin, maybe even slightly grey. After all, such a trip is a lifetime. By the way, none of the journalists have ever traveled like this before. At least I didn’t travel from Moscow to Vladivostok by train. So we wish our brave special correspondents good luck and peaceful fellow travelers.
Why is all this needed?
We at the editorial office have not yet fully understood why. Vladimir Vorsobin tried to answer this question:
“When I said that photojournalist Vitya Guseinov and I would travel by train to Vladivostok, people were simply silent and looked at me. During this time, I managed to say that the task was to get to the ends of the earth in 25 days, describing the adventures in a blog. What in general, it’s a risky idea. But, probably, we’ll get there... And then usually, depending on their temperament, people began to smile or laugh, but more often they looked pityingly: they say, poor people, have they gone crazy?
58 trains. Fifty small Russian towns, stops. Small villages, in the names of which real Russia. Erofey Pavlovich, Winter, Taiga, Tulun, Yar, Shakhunya, Shalya... And thousands, thousands of kilometers. Why are we going? One common goal: to get to Vladik relatively alive.
Vitya Huseynov is a typical crazy artist (sorry, Vitya). No one else would have signed up for this. Huseynov hopes to enjoy Russian beauty and make an enchanting photo report about Russian outback, publish a book. Vitya is an intellectual from Kaliningrad, and in my opinion, he doesn’t really know where he’s going. This is Tulun, Vit! Listen - Taiga, Winter. Everything is real here. That is, don't plan anything. This is Mother Russia... “And at night walking through the forest Satan collects fresh souls. Winter has received new blood and it will receive you...”
I also don’t really imagine what will happen in the end. Because journalists rarely cross the border between “Muscovy” and Russia, which is spread over a terrible territory between cities with a population of over a million. She's like Zone from Stalker. As physicists say, “dark matter.” They don't see her. Airplanes fly over it. People stare sleepily at her from the windows of fast trains. You can drive through it without noticing it.
But if you take the same train with Russia. And you will get off with her at an abandoned station... “They don’t have a coachman at the post office...”. So, off we went. “That means we have a way there, that means we have a way there!”
Preliminary route
Moscow - Vladimir - Vyazniki - Nizhny Novgorod- Vetluzhskaya - Shakhunya - Kotelnich - Kirov - Yar - Balezino - Vereshchagino - Perm - Shalya - Ekaterinburg - Oshchepkovo - Tyumen - Vagai - Ishim - Nazyvaevskaya - Omsk - Tatarskaya - Barabinsk- Chulimskaya - Novosibirsk - Bolotnoye - Taiga - Mariinsk - Chernorechenskaya - Krasnoyarsk - Uyar - Ilanskaya - Taishet - Nizhneudinsk - Tulun - Winter - Cheremkhovo - Irkutsk - Slyudyanka - Mysovaya - Ulan-ude - Petrovsky Plant - Khilok - Mogzon - Chita - Karymskaya - Shilka - Chernyshevsk - Zilovo - Ksenyevskaya - Mogocha - Erofey Pavlovich - Skovorodino - Taldan - Magdagachi - Arkhara - Obluchye - Birobidzhan - Khabarovsk - Vyazemskaya - Ussuriysk - Vladivostok
You can send a message to the guys via SMS, Viber, WhatsApp or just call +7-917-514-32-38 - tell them about something interesting that they can meet on the route, report a problem and even invite them to visit!
Kursk station. Train to Vladivostok. Let her actually go to Vladimir. Doesn't matter. Guseinov and I have nowhere to retreat. This is the first of 58 electric trains on our route across Russia. A couple of hours in Vladimir. Then - another “dog” to the great city of Vyazniki. So what is next…
Snowstorm as luck would have it.
Vitya hums for some reason good song: “Maybe we’ll come back, Lieutenant Golitsyn...”
Sings on the first kilometer of nine thousand.
It's late, Vitya. Late.
Huseynov demands to write in the expedition diary (he won this right - V.V.):
“This is probably wrong, but I thought that in my own country I partly feel like a foreigner. Volodya! But we have absolutely no idea what awaits us there, after Irkutsk (we still have to get to Perm - V.V.). There's a black hole there! There is no life!
But for now we are close to Moscow. This means: everything is normal - the train is crowded.
They grabbed a seat opposite a well-dressed citizen. Too good. It turns out that here, a couple of kilometers from the Moscow Ring Road, it catches your eye. And the look is not morning-gloomy, like everyone else here, going to serve with quiet disgust. And calm. “Employer,” I manage to think. And I fall asleep. I can fall asleep while sitting. This is my main trump card when traveling. Huseynov doesn't know how. And he sits angry.
The Christians woke up. Merchants with their lamps and food foil could not. And these…
“Happiness is not money or a house. Happiness is life with a loving Christ,” the young couple sang with a guitar. She sang well. And I was already reaching for the money. All the same, they are not happiness. But the Christians said: believe in God, people. He is merciful. And without taking a penny, we got off at the bus stop.
Then I finally woke up to look at the believers without ribs.
“Yes, this is amazing,” Guseynov agreed indifferently, staring gloomily out the window.
Apparently, having heard this, a man from the next row suddenly spoke up:
“But miracles do happen. I once went to the temple. And he put the icon in his back pocket along with his ID. And I feel something tickling there. I come home and have a burn on my thigh. Exactly the size of the icon. The saint was offended by me. But he gave a sign!”
“Amazing,” Vitya nodded calmly.
How can you not talk to your neighbor in four hours? You guessed right - a businessman. Igor. I just “dropped my business.” That is, I sold it. He says “my nerves couldn’t stand it.” A crisis. Demand in Vladimir has fallen so much that his businessman friends have no time for development - just to stay afloat. In Moscow, people are still buying something, but in Vladimir - “that’s it, we’ve arrived.” The people only have enough for food.
Igor is a determined patriot of his country. He often watches TV and foreign policy the authorities support in everything. “They are crushing us,” he says. - “If we didn’t lock up Crimea, they punished us for something else.”
But, he says, TV greatly embellishes Russian reality. I feel sorry for the pensioners. On blue screens Their pensions are increased, but grandmothers are actually begging. 6-8 thousand. This is exactly a communal apartment in an ordinary Vladimir apartment.
But he has no intention of leaving. “We Russians are only real at home,” he says, “And if you leave...” (wrinkles).
He says he will not return to business. will become employee. Or he will go to the authorities. It's calmer this way.
Then the whole carriage found out that we were going to Vladivostok. Some student overheard. And he yelled loudly: “Cool!” The neighbors smiled.
“Oh, I once dreamed about this,” they sighed behind them.
“Weirdos,” they said quietly from the left.
“I would also get out of here,” someone in the vestibule sadly remarked. - “And then every day for four hours back and forth, back and forth...”.
“Well, hold on!” - the inhabitants of the first of 58 electric trains wished us. And they even promised to follow us on kp.ru.
“Why do we need foreign land, lieutenant,” Huseynov nodded absently to them, and entered the city of Vladimir. Absolutely, categorically unaware that within an hour we would find ourselves in prison.
This conclusion was made by Komsomolskaya Pravda journalists Viktor Guseinov and Vladimir Vorsobin after visiting Nazyvaevsk, in the Omsk region.
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As you know, Komsomolskaya Pravda columnist Vladimir Vorsobin and photojournalist Viktor Guseinov ventured on a long journey (about 25 days) by train from Moscow to Vladivostok. Two brave travelers will have to travel on 58 electric trains over 50 stations, 9288 kilometers, including through Nazyvaevsk and Omsk. (the guys have already passed our stations and are now approaching Irkutsk). I contacted Viktor Guseinov by phone and asked him how the Omsk land met and greeted him (by the way, the connection was excellent).
Night "Nazyvaevskaya"
Photo: Victor GUSEINOV
Victor willingly shared his impressions. So, they stayed in Nazyvaevsk for almost a day, spent the night at the station, in which, according to Victor, there was an excellent rest room, not inferior to a room in any hotel. True, in order to get from the train to the platform, one had to climb under the freight train cars, this is how journalists described this event on the website “kp.ru”: “A surprised child’s face appeared at the giant wheels. We pull out the child... At that moment it seemed that all of Russia, if something happened, would calmly, without question, crawl under any carriage. “This country cannot be intimidated by sanctions!” - I remembered our “reader” phone number, in Lately gushing with aphorisms and videos from different parts of the world. Something like this: “Hold on, guys, we are with you! But we shot a video, look how sunny and warm it is in Italy!”
- Ma-a-am, is it really possible to climb under carriages? - some curious boy finally asked his disheveled mother after the freight train. – What if they went?
The mother winced and waved her hand. Once. The train to Omsk was slowing down in front of us.”
In the carriage of the Omsk electric train.
Photo: Victor GUSEINOV
The guests stayed in Omsk for almost two days, spent the night at the Aurora Hotel, where the bathrooms were small, but there was plenty of hot water, and the guests were able to take a long-awaited shower, and Vladimir Vorsobin even steamed in the sauna. Victor photographed beautiful Omsk girls in fur coats, walked along the “local Arbat”, the modern street named after. Chokana Valikhanov and along the updated Lyubinsky Prospekt, visited the Assumption Cathedral and even took a photo of the crossing to nowhere, it turns out that such a pedestrian crossing sign stands in our Siberian snows. In one of the passages of the never completed metro, travelers listened to a street singer. “And, in my opinion, it’s beautiful here...”, Victor will say to a random lonely interlocutor, a “talker”, to whom everything “sucks”.
Frosty morning Omsk.
Photo: Victor GUSEINOV
Victor will write: “By the way, I noticed that the attitude of the townspeople towards hometown– it’s like a squabble between a parent and a teenager. A hellish mixture of youthful mockery, old man's grumbling and bashfully hidden father-son love. Here, too, the townspeople love to make fun of their homeland.”
View of winter Omsk.
Photo: Victor GUSEINOV
“Hidden father-son love...” You can't say it more precisely! And it’s true, no matter what our region is, we love it in both cold and hot weather.
Why did they go? Vladimir Vorsobin said this: “I also don’t really imagine what will happen in the end. Because journalists rarely cross the border between “Muscovy” and Russia, which is spread over a terrible territory between cities with a population of over a million. She's like Zone from Stalker. As physicists say, “dark matter.” They don't see her. Airplanes fly over it. People stare sleepily at her from the windows of fast trains. You can drive through it without noticing it. But if you take the same train with Russia. And you will get off with her at an abandoned station... “They don’t have a coachman at the post office...”. So, off we went. “That means we have a way there, that means we have a way there!”
Typical Omsk.
Photo: Victor GUSEINOV
Travelers will return to Moscow by plane
Photo: vladi-room.ruVladivostok, IA Primorye24. The final station is literally a few minutes away. It will be the end great trip. Behind the journalists' Komsomolskaya Pravda» Vladimir Vorsobin and Viktor Guseinov 58 trains and more than a month of travel. The idea of traveling from Moscow to Vladivostok by train was borrowed from the Internet. The journalists themselves read an article by one of the users - that such an adventure is quite real: for this you will need 58 electric trains. And, of course, a strong desire to get to the end.
Vladimir Vorsobin, traveler:“In our newspaper they somehow went around this. And Vitya and I decided to take on this matter. Not only because it is a sporting interest, and like “is it weak?”, but also because they wanted to see the country. At the same time, not the one that sits in millionaires and on Facebook and thinks that it is the whole country, but the country that is located between cities, which lives its own life and few people know about it.”
The route did not seem easy from the very beginning: the names of the stations “Zima”, “Erofei Pavlovich”, “Tulun”, “Yar”, “Taiga” clearly did not inspire anything kind and comfortable. In fact, it turned out that real people live in harsh climatic conditions, good people, always ready to help, warm, feed and give a lift. even if this is contrary to work instructions. By the way, readers who followed the fate of travelers from the first day very often helped along the way. This is why travelers joke: there are three of them on the journey: two journalists and a friend - a telephone.
“The mutual assistance in this country is simply - simply amazing. That is, if, God forbid, you get into a bad situation somewhere, you will die, unless you open your mouth and convert. The desire here to save someone is simply enormous.”
Electric trains became a kind of tour guide for travelers: the clothes of the passengers, the number of carriages, and the condition of the stations spoke about the well-being of the region. Ticket prices. So, for example, in Chita the electric train consisted of only one carriage, and the price for 1 ticket was at the cost of a suite: 1,400 rubles. Traveling by train has become an encyclopedia of not only the way of life in the outback. But also own capabilities and unpretentiousness.
Victor Guseinov, traveler:“I never knew before that there were toilets on trains, it was just a discovery for me. And so you can live here: I slept here, I’m used to sleeping on these scarlet shelves. I am 2 meters tall, but I sleep well on them. I slept in the driver’s cabin, I slept in a truck, I slept in some small little rooms at the station, which was also a discovery for me that there are rest rooms at train stations and they are decent.”
Vladimir Vorsobin and Viktor Guseinov share their impressions in the last minutes of the trip with fellow journalists. They also heard the long-awaited message from the driver. The locomotive crew from the side of the electric train driver and assistant driver congratulate Vladimir Vorsobin and Viktor Guseinov, journalists of Komsomolskaya Pravda, on the completion of the journey on electric trains along the Moscow - Vladivostok route. Congratulations from the bottom of our hearts. - You can clap.